Romney smart to speak to NAACP

It’s a safe bet to say that GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney will not garner many votes from African Americans in November.

Not only is he running against the first Black president, Barack Obama, but the GOP has also done such a lousy job of cultivating Black voters over the last 40 years that it has pretty much given Democrats an easy path to winning 90-plus percent of Black voters.

Yet despite the long odds, Romney’s decision to speak at the upcoming NAACP national convention in Houston is a smart move, and one that could be beneficial to his candidacy and the future prospects of the party.

Let’s face it, the Republican Party is as white as it could be. Sure, the party can boast of the electoral wins of Reps. Allen West and Tim Scott, both African American; Govs. Bobby Jindal and Nikki Haley, Indian Americans; and Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and Susana Martinez, both Hispanic; but it gets virtually nothing from Black folks and is dominated by the Democratic Party among Hispanics. And with America fastly becoming a majority-minority nation, the GOP better figure out real soon that relying on white voters to win local, state and national elections ain’t the smartest electoral strategy.

It seems the GOP is deathly afraid of reaching out to Black folks. I’ve even said that it seems like the GOP is scared of Black people. That has ticked off some conservatives, but it’s real. I’ve had a difficult time getting white Republicans in Congress to come on my TV One Cable Network Sunday morning news show, Washington Watch. We’ve had an open invitation for the last three years for EVERY MEMBER of the GOP’s House and Senate caucuses to come on the show, and only Reps. Tom Price of Georgia, Pete Olson of Texas and Steve King of Iowa have accepted the offer. You would think a back bencher who never gets called by a network would be willing to get some face time on the only one-hour Sunday morning news show targeting African Americans on a Black cable network, but GOP press secretaries have been pretty awful at even returning emails and phone calls.

Now I’m sure there will be some who will say, “A Black Agenda should be an American agenda.” But let’s be real: politicians appeal to constituencies all of the time. What you say to social conservative evangelicals isn’t the same thing you tell Latino elected officials, and we know that speaking to women’s organizations isn’t the same as talking to a LGBT group.

The reality is that when issues such as mandatory minimum sentences are discussed, that affects African Americans in a different way than the rest of the country. If the issue is HIV/AIDS, there is no doubt a general message is vital, but when the rise today is among African Americans, then a different focus is necessary. If the issue is the nation’s housing crisis, of course that is a general issue. But 53 percent of Black wealth has been erased due to the housing foreclosure crisis, and with the Census Bureau reporting this week that whites have 22 times the wealth of Blacks, how to close that gap is worthy of a discussion.

When Gov. Mike Huckabee was governor of Arkansas, he enjoyed Black support at the polls above 40 percent, and the same for Ohio Sen. George Voinovich. But that only happens when you don’t run from African Americans and instead engage them, dialogue with them and work with them.

The GOP should be thinking of the long-term and not the short-term. Sure, in the interim, it’s not going to result in a huge block of votes, but the only way the GOP can break the Democrats’ lock on the Black vote is to go after it.

But Mitt, just do me one favor, when you speak to the NAACP: please don’t come with that “the party of Lincoln” crap. The GOP of the 1800s ain’t the same one it is today. Black folks rewarded the GOP for decades based on Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, and Richard Nixon erased that with the implementation of the Southern Strategy, which was all about alienating Black voters and appealing to white voters.

I say it’s time to emancipate the GOP from its hostility towards African Americans. Speaking to the NAACP is a step, but that must be followed by many other outreach efforts large and small.

But it’s a start. And I’ll be right there in my hometown of Houston, Mitt, to see if you offering empty platitudes or a real blueprint for change that Black folks could realistically consider.